Page 84 - Living Room Wars Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World

Melodramatic identifications: television fiction and women's fantasy 75
a form of excess in some women’s mode of experiencing everyday life in our culture: the
act of surrendering to the melodramatic imagination may signify a recognition of the
complexity and conflict fundamental to living in the modern world.

SOAP OPERA AND THE MELODRAMATIC IMAGINATION

I now move to summing up some of the structural soap opera characteristics of Dallas
which contributed to its melodramatic meanings (see Allen 1985). It should first be
noted, however, that because Dallas is a prime-time programme, some of its features
were different from those of the traditional daytime soaps. Most importantly, because the
programme must attract a heterogeneous audience, it included a wider range of themes,
scenes and plots. For example, male characters, as well as themes, scenes and plots which
traditionally are mainly appreciated by male audiences, such as the wheelings and
dealings of the oil business, and the cowboy/Western elements of the show, occupied a
much more prominent place in the fictional world of Dallas than in regular daytime soap.
Nevertheless, the general formal characteristics of Dallas did remain true to the soap
opera genre, and are very important for the construction of melodramatic meanings and
feelings in the text (see Feuer 1984; Ang 1985; also for melodrama in general see Brooks
1976; Gledhill 1987).
First of all, as in all melodrama, personal life is the core problematic of the narrative.
Personal life must be understood here as constituted by its everyday realization through
personal relationships. In soap operas, the evolution of personal relationships is marked
out through the representation of significant family rituals and events such as births,
romances, engagements, marriages, divorces, deaths, and so on. It is the experience of
these rituals and events (and all the attendant complications and disputes) on which soap
opera narratives centre. This does not imply that non-personal issues are not addressed.
However, the way in which they are treated and take on meaning is always from the
standpoint of personal life:

[T]he action of soap opera is not restricted to the familial, or quasifamilial
institutions, but everything is told from the point of view of the personal.
(Brunsdon 1981:34)

Thus, while J.R.’s business intrigues formed a focal narrative concern in Dallas, they
were always shown with an eye to their consequences for the well-being of the Ewing
family members, not least his wife, Sue Ellen.
A second major melodramatic feature of soap opera is its excessive plot structure. If
family life was the main focus of the Dallas narrative, the life of the Ewings was
presented as one replete with extraordinary conflicts and catastrophes To the critical
outsider this may appear as a purely sensationalist tendency to cliché and exaggeration—
a common objection levelled at melodrama since the late nineteenth century. It is
important to note, however, that within the fictional world of the soap opera all those
extreme story lines such as kidnappings, bribery, extramarital affairs, obscure illnesses,
and so on, which succeed each other at such a breathtaking pace, are not treated in a
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sensational manner, but are taken entirely seriously. The parameters of melodrama